Designing
and creating your own online course can be a daunting task! I remember back to
what my mother used to tell me. She would say, “You can put hard work and time
into a project now to save time later, or you be lazy now and spend double the
time later.” This quote has always stuck with me as I work on any type of
project. No matter if it is working on projects around my house, at work, or
for my college class, the amount of time and energy I spend up front truly dictates
that amount of time I will have to spend later. Take for instance designing an
online class. It is going to take a substantial amount of time to design the
course so that those who participate can easily navigate and work through the
lessons and activities without getting confused and/or frustrated. I have found
in my experience of creating training sessions for teachers in my school
district that I have to put about 3 times the amount of time into the creation
of the training as is the length of the training itself. However, with adequate
planning, in the end, my job as the facilitator becomes more streamlined which
saves me time during and after the training.
As
I have designed my online course for my master’s class this semester, I have
also found that it is extremely time consuming to create the course so that it
is easy to navigate and also has clear and concise instructions for the
students. I have been fortunate to have a fantastic peer reviewer. She has been
so detailed in her feedback to me on items that I might want to address.
Questions she has raised about terms that I use within the instructions that
she did not understand made me realize that if new teachers to our school district
were to take my course, they may not understand these as well. As a result, I
have tried to give more information within the instructions to explain these
terms. Additionally, she has looked at the activities that I have created so
far and she has had questions on due dates and how the collaborative pieces
would work. This has also made me go back and rethink what I have written so
that the students will have a better understanding.
As
a peer reviewer myself, the work of my peer reviewer made me think more about
the work that I reviewed. I could tell that my peer reviewer spent time
watching my videos, looking over my assessment rubrics, and reading through
step by step instructions that I created. With her great feedback on each of
these, it made me do a better job when I looked over another students\’s work.
I realized how much the peer review of my work helped me make a much better product.
I want to have the same influence on the student that I peer review.
As
I mentioned earlier, I spend a majority of my time at work preparing for
upcoming trainings and meetings. Each of these requires a large amount of time
to prepare so that they run efficiently. When thinking about a professional
timeline for preparing materials, I feel that I am involved with this every
day. Professional timelines make it so that there is usually not enough time in
the work day to properly prepare. Many times, I have to spend hours outside of
the work day to complete the tasks in preparation for the activities that are
to come. However, I know that if I put the time and effort into the creation of
my materials now, my training or meeting will go much smoother for my students
and myself.
